ABSTRACT
Imagine the following scenes from two virtual worlds:
You arrive in town by way of an old Chevy Camaro and the scene coalesces in your field of vision. It is filled with trees, crumbling buildings, and a winding river that settles into a crystal lake. Climbing from the rusting car, the cracked leather pops and separates into rivulets of feathered gray stuffing. A wooden sign stands quietly before you reading:
Welcome to Anytown: A friendly place to call home.
You turn towards the building that is the reason you came: The Anytown News. Walking inside, the wooden floors flex underfoot. Before you can proceed, acrid smoke outside redirects your attention to a log cabin in flames. The roof suddenly collapses, spraying ashes onto an obscured historic marker. A blue-suited sheriff stands nearby, badge gleaming, spitting conflagrations laughing cruelly with each breath of wind. You venture back out and approach him. With a fraying garden hose, he silences the guttering sparks that singe a nearby store. You inquire about the blaze and the officer states that without a fire department in town, he cannot investigate. “I have some leads,” the lawman tells you. “But the evidence will be gone before I can get to it. Will you help?”
…
Much further away, in a locale not so ordinary, two men walk through a small room towards the balcony door. They hear masses of people outside eagerly awaiting the speech they know is to come. As the balcony door slides open the noise grows louder. They now see people cheering, whistling, and waving flags. The cobblestone plaza outside the hotel is filled to the brim with adherents, all there to greet, listen to, and get a glimpse of, their leader. Momentarily waiting by the balcony railing, the shorter of the two men stands looking out over the crowd in his army green outfit and cap on his head. A couple of feet behind him, his brother steps to the side. They know this procedure by now. They have done this many times together. The man by the railing slowly lifts his arm and with his hand makes the gesture and the masses immediately fall silent in anticipation of what is to come. Clearing his throat he begins: “Workers, farmers, students, all Cubans — these are the questions we should ask ourselves —” The people listen eagerly. Here is the man who will help them past their troubled times — here, finally is their hope for a better future.
These two scenes illustrate a learner's experiences as they enter game and virtual world spaces created in the last decade to support student knowledge building. The first, Anytown, is an example of a naturalistic problem in a story-driven game used to engage students in learning through play. It was designed for elementary and middle schools, students to immerse them in reading and writing activities that were both active and practical, tying their constructed solutions to fictional writing problems and authentic, real world work (Warren, Stein, Dondlinger, & Barab, 2009). The second scene, from a virtual world role play called Castro Salvado, was developed by students in a higher education history course. Students engaged in active learning through role-playing in a constructivist learning environment. The role play which included perspectives for and against the Castro regime was captured on machinima (see https://www.machinima.com/" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.machinima.com/.) for later classroom viewing and discourse. Constative classroom communication about the learning experience and expressions of intersubjective understanding of the complex events leading up to the Cuban Revolution, contributed to students' higher-level understanding of the real-world events (Wakefield, Mills, Warren, Rankin, & Gratch, 2012). We shall return to the Anytown and Castro Salvado scenes later in the chapter.